Why Third Tribe is Shutting Down

Why Third Tribe is Shutting Down

Reader Comments (150)

  1. My disappointment at this news was alleviated by the brilliant homage paid to the God of Gonzo, may he rest in peace.

  2. “The Third Tribe ad banner is still there on the page, so it must be really bad if they even hadn’t the time to deal with that” , were my first thoughts when reading the “news”. LOL. Well done, copy-pros.

  3. Brian just tweeted about Fear & Loathing yesterday I believe. Funny write, Sonia. Loved it.

    ps. There are 25 misspelled words in this post.

  4. Stacey, that would have been a good addition!

    Andrew, glad to have soothed your disappointment.

  5. @Mistina, you’re very kind. I stole all the best lines from Hunter Thompson, I must admit.

  6. @Raymond, so you found all the stuff about Brian, Darren & Chris perfectly plausible? I can see that.

  7. Wow, Sonia! That reads like a Quentin Tarantino adventure for copywriters. I hope Brian’s okay by now too. Happy AFD, me hearties!

  8. Since it’s afternoon in the UK and the April foolery has to stop at noon I was almost taken in. My daughter’s still keeping on with the gags too since she tells me she’s on Malibu time.

  9. Sonia,

    Will Chris be out of rehab in time for SOBCon? I was looking forward to meeting him… Brian too – without the guns and tranquilizers or anything… 🙂

    @LisaPetrilli

  10. “I’m going to take a walk on this beautiful first day of April.”

    Well done, Sonia. Lordy, I hope you an my wife don’t get together. She is an April Fools Day maniac.

  11. The funny part about this is, that I live about 75 miles from Austin and could see this happening at SXSW!

    Great story, I even loved the part about the bats.

  12. Dude…. That is such terrible marketing 🙂 Well done, bravo, thumbs up. How I loathe april fool’s day. Determined not to be gotten this year, so: kudos

  13. This is hilarious, I almost spit my coffee all over the screen. This is not the kinda of things that we are expecting to show up in Google reader, although today I was expecting it.

  14. @Martin, my karma for today is toast. 🙂 I fall for stuff too, every damned year.

  15. Five. F I V E whole paragraphs before your mention of drugs reminded me of the date. How I came to be such a sucker is beyond me. Tho we’re supposed to believe our Third Tribe Founders, right? (What with your interest in marketing, and all.) Sweet…

  16. Sonia:

    Best. Post. Evah.

    And I’ve said it before: as far as I’m concerned, you ARE the only one working at Copyblogger. Every time I click over here, it’s a post of yours that I see.

    Mark

  17. Excellent, I give you a sense of joy to you Sonia. I totally agree with yours, third tribe is sometimes not always to our benefit. Even worse, the devastation continues!

  18. @Melody, I shouldn’t even open my laptop on 4/1. I believe everything. Hope it made you smile, anyway. 🙂

  19. The VERY reason why even God can screw up now and then when he said, “and the meek shall inherit the Earth”…

    He forgot man’s invention of techy blogger nerds run a-muck! (tee hee)

  20. @Mark, little did we know that when he came over to your place for a visit and sprayed you in the face with the fire extinguisher, it was just the beginning.

  21. Hee hee! I’m reading the first few paragraphs thinking to myself, “This doesn’t sound like Brian…and they have all commented on 3T in the last few days…huh?”

    At the mention of the Rolls Royce I caught on…I’m slow on the pick up! thanks for the laugh :-).

  22. @Brian, I’ve had at least 5 people say the same. I think you should just embrace it.

  23. Ok ok ok… you absolutely fooled me, Sonia!!!
    This latina -that totally loves you all, guys- should get the fool’s trophy -if you thought about one for your readers. 😉

    Great job!!
    Saludos,
    Vicky

  24. Oh hell, this is an April Fools post. I got out of Third Tribe because it isn’t my tribe. 🙂

    Actually, Chris B. tweeting from the Martha’s Vineyard ferry asking people “Which brands do you love?” did it for me, no lie! Anyone in a situation like that who isn’t watching the water, clouds, and seagulls needs to throw the iPhone overboard. Seriously. That kind of disconnect from one’s surroundings is exactly what’s wrong with us, “productivity” be damned.

    Just not where I’m at. And this is not an April Fool’s comment. 🙂

  25. Ha! That was a great story. Probably the best April Fools joke I’ve seen yet. Gotta admit, was a bit nervous when I saw the title in all the tweets!

  26. All of you Conspiracy Theory wackos trying to blame this story on April Fool’s Day…Of course it’s true! It’s about Clark, Brogan and Rowse…

  27. The funniest thing I’ve read in a very long time. Sonia, you made my day. 🙂

  28. @Neil, indeed, all of the really good lines in this were stolen from Hunter. 🙂 My absolute favorite being “Social media is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.” Which I think was originally about the music business, but may have been television, I saw sources for both.

  29. “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”

    This post wins you a free drink at the Woody Creek Taven. Just tell them to put it on Hunter’s Tab.

  30. @Gretchen, I would have loved to find something I could use wholesale, but nope, I had to stitch it together from multiple bits. Chris Brogan is mostly Norma Desmond. And Darren’s dialogue is, in fact, courtesy of Crocodile Dundee.

    You realize the two of them will never forgive me for this one.

  31. @Darren. Alas, I cannot claim responsibility for it, it’s just cribbed from the film. I have been seized by this sudden strange desire to watch Fear & Loathing again and I just don’t know why…

  32. @Brian Well, the idea *emerged* that it wasn’t true, but y’know, Sonia is such a great writer and I’m not too bright. But Chris in a Rolls….that just seemed over the top :-).

  33. Aww! I watched Crocodile Dundee recently, and the “You call that a knife?!” part was just classic!

    Thanks for writing this Sonia, it’s awesome. What a piece of work… 😉

  34. I got the feeling reading this post that it must have been written pretty much as a “stream of conscientiousness” thing much the same way Hunter Thompson wrote. Great read. Great joke.

  35. Just where were John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in this story?? What a creative and wonderful way to let all of us see the “real people” behind all of this madness.

  36. Sonia,

    You gave me a heart attack, until I started picking up little hints of Gonzo Journalism. You didn’t do anything psychedelic to your brain when you were young and crazy, did you. (Tim Leary was a great influence on Hunter Thompson) Sometimes, it can lay there dormant for years…and then…POP.. off you go. Down the hole, chasing the white rabbit and singing off key Gracie Slick.

    Nice piece…even if the headline stopped my heart. Thank God for those at home de-fib machines.

    Steve

  37. Oh man, you had me going there for a while. Then I just settled back and had the best belly laugh I’ve had in ages. I really needed that. Your characters were so vivid, I wondered how they could seem so “normal” all these years!

  38. Having just dosed up on my maintenance ether huff this morning, I had to go another round after reading this piece. I think your accelerator pedal got stuck on your Prius, but we’re all the better for it. Thank you.

  39. OMG, Sonia!! You gotta tell us Gen Way-Prior-To-Y that Depends may be needed to read this post (wiping the tears from my eyes)!

  40. In my sleep deprived stupor this morning, I clicked on Chris’ tweet, totally forgetting it was April Fools Day (even though my son ran around the house frantic this morning looking for fake spiders to put in his classmates pencil cases) horrified that Third Tribe was shutting down (and before I even got around to joining!!! I have been meanign to do that!!!)
    A few sentences in, I started squinting at the screen — have I lost my mind or did she just say… And then it hit me. HA – you got me! Well, at least for the first four paragraphs.
    Relief that it isn’t true — although I always suspected those guys were capable of evil.

  41. Don’t care much for April Fool’s, never did, but this just made my day. Seriously. Haven’t had a laugh like this in days. I see an HBO series somewhere in there. A couple actually.

  42. I’m in the middle of reading that book now! It’s fresh enough in my mind to really appreciate this post. Thanks for the laugh. 🙂

  43. @Steve, glad we didn’t lose you!

    @Benjamin, I wonder that every day. 🙂

    @Janice, we’re definitely capable of evil, in a nice way of course!

    @Danica, I like that idea. Someone mentioned BBC as well. It could be our version of the British show Top Gear. “Top Blog.” I think it could be a hit.

  44. All i can say is oh.. my … God

    Sonia: that was brilliant. I was just watching “Gonzo” two DAYS ago (hunter’s bio-pic, btw it’s streaming on netflix), and i lost it when you started on the swooping bats and lawyers bit, and Darren and Brogan: “I’m still big! It’s the media that got small.”

    This one should go down in the history books…

    “Social media is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.”

    – Thanks, you definitely made my day. 😀

  45. PLEASE Brian, please tell me this is your idea of a sick April Fools Day joke! I love the Third Tribe so much! Please don’t shut Third Tribe down!! All I want is a chance to join it so bad!

  46. I was freaked out for a while until I read the comments and saw the April Fools references.

  47. Wow that’s a great story Sonia! A video would be really, really awesome 🙂

    I’m laughing my [expletive] [expletive] off! LOL

  48. Too bad you couldn’t record how many people opened that e-mail the second the subject line hit their inbox. I bet it was a record. I know I hit it right away.

    Way to go! Good April Fool jokes are hard to come by.

  49. I woke up late today and went to check my email. This was the first email title I saw and I’ll admit it took a whole nano-second before I remembered the date. But as one about to launch into and rock the blog world with the great help of my Third Tribe Marketing membership, a nano second was too long.
    Thanks for the fun, and thanks for reminding me that I need Third Tribe and would miss it terribly.

  50. Brilliant! However, if you’re going to post about shutting down Third Tribe, it might be a better sell if you took the Third Tribe banner out of the sidebar…I suppose it probably got a lot of traffic from this though.

  51. What. No lizards in the lounge? I think you also forgot about the part where Brian was pleading with you to throw the radio in the bathtub with him while it was playing White Rabbit at maximum volume.

    I had no idea SXSW was so much like the Mint 500, but now that you mention it…

    Nice tribute, Simone – you have a real gift 🙂

  52. It would apply to you too as long as you use the same email address when you comment on your own posts here as your author profile – johnny at that site about the economy not happening. Want me to change that for you?

  53. Yeah, that’d be awesome. Thanks.

    I thought of that, but then looked at comments left by other post authors. I know I looked at Monday’s post by Chris Birk and his comments didn’t have it either, so I figured it was just you and Sonia.

  54. While I’m the last to comment…I’ll only be echoing what has already been said.

    Brilliant and Inspiring…I’m in awe and appreciative at the same time.

    @Sonia, I’ve learned a lot from this one…and a hell of a laugh.

  55. Hilarious!! Sorry that you are leaving this site. You’re next career should be making a movie of that story you spun for our entertainment.

  56. This is the funniest damn thing I’ve read in forever – I rolled in the aisle of the coffeehouse and that hottie I had my eye on stepped over me as he walked out the door – oopsey.

    Truly, I thought mine was good a few years ago when at age 50 & unattached I announced at a staff meeting that I was pregnant.

    You could have heard a pin drop. I could see the wheels spinning…which of her 20 or so lovers is the baby’s daddy? What color is it gonna be? I swear I saw them placing bets in the lounge later that day! 50 – f**k!

    After several frozen moments, though, the congrats started pouring in. I glowed. We pregnant ladies always do!

    Sonia you are BRILLIANT and IRREVERENT – there couldn’t be a better combo in my book! You made my day – after I recovered from the thought that Third Tribe might be gone!

  57. Sonia, This is the first time…when I started to read from your profile (usually I avoid) and I got the Boat of FULL OF FOOOOOLS!

    Good Going at least at First.

  58. Once again, we must bow to the genius that is CopyBlogger. The first time I read this, it made no sense at all. Then while reading it through again, it dawned on me what day it was. Great job, keep up the great work.

  59. after I stopped my sides from splitting with the laughter…..and read the rider in the footer…. guess what I did? Yep went and logged in at the Third Tribe.. BLOODY FUNNY thanks for the giggle.

  60. TFF!!! Sonia, as much as we all appreciate, grow, learn, share and love your contributions, could you please spend more time on your other calling: creative writing. Your Homage to the great, late Gonzo shows his spirit lives on. Wonderful to share this passion with so many of my fellow Copyblogger readers. We are a lively, literate bunch. Pls keep writing like this. Humor is certainly needed in these interesting times. Namaste, all.

  61. So this is April fools? I woke up today, and it’s April 2 in Sweden, and forgot all about April fools. This post really got me, I had to read it several times 🙂

  62. well it came to me on 2nd april in the am hours so i was stunned by the email heading and wasn’t sure what to think – i don’t know you all that well to know if this was real or not. didn’t click april fool’s in the usa still. oops. arghhhh!!!

  63. Hunter would be proud! Your voice is perfect. As your lawyer, I advise you to write even more…especially fiction! 🙂

    As soon as the drugs started to kick in, I knew it was an April Fools’ gag, but what a great one. This made Google’s Topeka gag look pretty lame.

  64. The half scots blood in me came to a boil when I read this, after seeing my most recent charge on the credit card for another month. Nice lady, real nice. 🙂

  65. Too funny – thank you for a brilliant joke. Of course the problem with reading your blogs too late if you are on a business or somewhere is you forget it was April Fool’s and still manage to get…well…fooled. Bravo!

  66. Okay, so I’m a little slow on the uptake. I just got to this post today (Saturday). I was halfway through the damn thing, before I realized when it was written. Very good. Very, very good.

  67. Thanks for the hilarious story Sonia. Sorry it didn’t work out but it sounds like you’ve had quite a ride. Can it all be summed up as too many cooks…? Planning a redesign of my blog and switching to Thesis soon. Will keep you posted!

  68. Sonia,

    You are my hero. This was great! Glad I didn’t read this on April 1. Would have been taken in more easily. Even today, I did hesitate.

    Great read. The comments are almost as good. We are a gullible bunch!

  69. Nicely done. I’ve always loved Hunter. Sad to see him go but we’ll meet eventually. Take care and thanks for reminding me about Vegas.

  70. Oh man… this had me going for a while and then I saw the date!

    Excellent story telling – There’s definitely a lesson there and pretty much everything else on Copyblogger.. thanks for the laugh!

    Dean

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